For Becky

My sister was one time waiting in line when she struck up a conversation with an old man, he told her about his wife, his God, and that dirty sonofabitch cancer. She came home and told me how kind and gentlemanly he seemed, except when it came to that dirty sonofabitch cancer, which had crossed the bounds of his courtesy, had provoked him to call it by it's full name.

I was reading a book called "Let's Be Enemies" to my daughter and thought of you, Beck. When you moved up from Texas I prayed at your first Sunday school meeting there that you would feel welcome. A year later I was making fun of you while you said the prayer in that same Sunday school class, but later that day you brought me brownies anyway.

I'll never forgive you for that.

You always tickled me until I got really angry. I hated it. Nothing feels more invalidating than trying to be mad when you can't stop laughing. I made fun of the trace of a Texas accent that you still had until you got really angry. I had not mastered the art of knowing when to shut it. I'm obviously still working on it. you were my best enemy whenever you weren't my best friend.

I felt like Laurie in Little Women, as Amy was always meant to be rich, Laurie was always meant to be a March, and the Brown girls had meant to be Tunnels. And it was good of the Tunnell girls to take us in, take us along for floats down lazy rivers in the blue green summertime. Jumping out with our tubes in your back yard, is there anything in the world more luxurious for a thirteen year old than your own private river? Playing SkipBo and RummiKub and dodging angry geese and making cinnamon rolls. My land, even thinking about it now who wouldn't want to be a Tunnell?

I hope you're not reading this, I hope you are busy getting better and eating cinnamon rolls and playing SkipBo. But while I'm down here and you're up there I'll be thinking of you and praying that you feel it and calling cancer, which I will never capitalize because the dirty sonofabitch doesn't deserve it, by it's full name.